


alone in my mind

by princessoftheworlds



Series: fool me once, fool me twice [8]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Torchwood
Genre: Horror, Immortal Ianto Jones, M/M, Original Character(s), Post-Canon Fix-It, Psychological Horror, Spaceships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-26
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 21:47:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27213661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/princessoftheworlds/pseuds/princessoftheworlds
Summary: 3987. An abandoned spaceship drifting through deep space, sending out a distress signal to whomever encounters it. And one Ianto Jones who boards to find that all the hundreds of passengers have mysteriously vanished.
Series: fool me once, fool me twice [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1819213
Comments: 48
Kudos: 28
Collections: Torchwood Fan Fests: Halloween Fest 2020





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween!
> 
> This fic is my contribution to Torchwood Fan Fest's Halloween Fest. It's 3/5 thru and will be completed soon enough! I'll be posting a chapter a day until Halloween! Spooooooooky!
> 
> Thanks to Bel for requesting part of the prompt. (You'll see what!)
> 
> Enjoy!

**3987**

**Deep space**

**Ianto**

The shrill screech of the alert shatters the stagnant silence of _The Myfanwy_ and sends Ianto stumbing off the bunk he’s sleeping on, shoving the blanket to the grey floor.

He doesn’t even remember dozing off, only lying down briefly to rest his eyes, but he staggers blearily through the short hallway towards the cockpit and drops into the pilot’s seat. He checks the display, flicking over various switches and stabbing numerous buttons in his semi-conscious attempt to trace the continuing alert.

Finally, he finds it.

“What the _fuck_ ?” he murmurs as he uses _The Myfanwy_ ’s navigation system to hone in on the source of the alert.

It’s a distress signal. For another spaceship. And it’s an outdated signal Ianto’s rarely seen before, belonging to an old, old model of a spaceship, the type he’s witnessed alien mechanics scavenge for parts.

This far into the vastness of space, there shouldn’t be another ship out there. Ianto’s only taking the direct route from one end of the galaxy to the other, hurtling towards a planet he heard the vaguest of rumors that Jack had been around. 

There shouldn’t be anyone else out there.

Pressing his face to the window of _The Myfanwy,_ Ianto gazes into the dark blanket of space, not a single bright star to be seen, and shudders. Space has always seemed haunting and lonely to Ianto, and if he hadn’t already seen some of the beauties and wonders the universe has to offer besides Earth, he would have wondered why Jack always longed for it.

Still, he’s Ianto Jones, and most importantly, he’s still Torchwood, no matter how far he is from Cardiff and the Rift. He has a duty to attend to the ship, no matter what the emergency may be.

Ianto sighs and sets course towards the distress signal.

* * *

_The Myfanwy_ latches onto the older spaceship effortlessly, and Ianto slips one sonic blaster into the holster at his hip, the other hidden under the leg of his trousers, his sonic screwdriver in the pocket of his coat. He adjusts the sleeves of his coat, just as he used to adjust the sleeves of his suits.

With a near-silent hiss, the doors of _The Myfanwy_ slide open, allowing him entry onto the other ship. Cautiously, he steps forwards. Motion-activated lights blind him in a stark white rush. Spots disintegrate gradually from his eyes to reveal the utilitarian grey walls of his new surroundings, the matching tiles beneath his boots.

“Hello?” he calls, hand hovering over the blaster at his hip. “Is anyone there? I caught your distress signal and traced it here.”

The silence persists. Ianto’s eyes narrow. “I promise, I’m here to help!”

The hallway before him stretches on unceasingly into darkness. Ianto can feel the hair on the back of his neck prickle as he advances down. His eyes sweep over every new inch of the hallway revealed by the lights. 

The ship is still and silent as a garden stifled beneath frost, his only company the metallic echo of his footsteps, the darkness of the hallway closing over him like a maw. Lights flicker to life as he passes, too dim to make much of a dent in the black, casting wavery spotlights against swathes of identical wall.

Finally, he hits the end of the hallway, a two-paneled door that remains locked when he waves a hand before the motion sensor. Deftly, Ianto tugs out his sonic screwdriver and holds it to the sensor. The screwdriver buzzes briefly, lighting up, before sparks fly from the sensor. 

There’s a slight _click_ as the lock disengages, and the door splits apart, both ends spooling back into the walls, to reveal a large cafeteria. The walls are the same grey as the hallway, but the tile has switched to a tan color that only makes the space feel more drab.

Round blue tables with matching benches are placed throughout the cafeteria, and each is still littered with empty trays and cups. They are perfectly clean, albeit covered with a shroud of dust thick enough for Ianto to draw in, just like the tables. 

It isn’t the dust but the fact that the tables are still set with the trays that sends chills darting down Ianto’s spine. It feels unusually eerie, almost like the passengers of the ship had sat down for the beginnings of a meal before being called away. 

They’d just gotten up and walked away, in the middle of everything.

Large windows sprawled along the full expanse of a wall look out into the impenetrable darkness of space. Ianto wanders over, staring out. The vast emptiness stares back. He’s forced to tear his eyes away.

There are several hallways leading away from the cafeteria, and Ianto picks on at random. He strides down the hallway, drab utilitarian grey, just as before, skin prickling into goosebumps. 

He hasn’t seen a single soul since he boarded this ship. Not a single person. 

It feels like a ghost town. It seems like there should be cobwebs everywhere, but there are only layers and layers of dust.

This new hallway leads him towards the barracks. He wanders through room after room of bunks and past the occasional private cabin. 

It has become abundantly clear that something is wrong now. Unlike the cafeteria, where everything felt perfectly placed, here, bunks have been left unmade, belongings scattered about.

Ianto is crossing through one such room when he nearly stumbles over a soft object. He kneels down and slowly tugs the object from underneath his boot.

It is a toy, a soft raggedy teddy bear with stuffing clouding out from a tear near its shoulder. Its eyes have been replaced with mismatched chipped buttons. The stitches binding the rest of the bear are coming loose, clearly having been repaired countless times.

This bear is a beloved toy, belonging to a child who has cherished it for most of their life. Having been a father, Ianto knows that a child would never willingly part with their teddy bear. If they adored it enough to bring it with them on a strange ship, they would never leave it behind in the barracks, never abandon it.

There’s a growing lump in Ianto’s throat.

Huw had a bear like this one as a child, Ianto remembers. He’d had it specifically made for Huw’s first birthday, and his son had dragged it everywhere. Ariadne had scolded him enough times for dragging it through the mud as he played in Leev’s forests. And when Huw had his first daughter, he’d passed it on to her.

Ianto lifts his wrist and peels back the flap to his vortex manipulator. Too late, he does what he should have when he first boarded the ship; he searches for life signs aboard.

There are none.

If there is not a single person alive on this ship, who sent out the distress signal?

“What have you gotten yourself into, Jones?” he mutters as he leaves the barracks, heading deeper into the belly of the ship. He hasn’t been successful in using his vortex manipulator to produce a map, but he has locked onto the ship’s internal communications network. Hopefully, that should be enough to lead him towards navigation.

Ianto drifts towards another hallway, following the faint beeping of his vortex manipulator, until he rounds a corner and stumbles upon another locked door.

This one should be an utility closet, he presumes, but still lifts his sonic screwdriver from his pocket and positions it at the touch panel embedded in the wall besides the door. 

The door slides open with a quiet hiss, but the screwdriver tumbles from Ianto’s stiff fingers and he bends to retrieve it.

His gaze lands on silver booted feet, disturbing the cottonlike drifts of dust. Metal ridges of abdomen, dulled by time and freckled with rust, the shuttered porthole of a false heart. And then his eyes slowly finish their journey to peer into the dead eyes of a Cyberman.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And now I can freely say, thank you to Bel for the Cybermen prompt! Hope you enjoy the rest of this spooky!

**3987**

**Deep space**

**Ianto**

Ianto’s blood freezes in his veins as he stands there, rooted with fear.

For just a moment, he’s standing in the blood-stained corridor of Canary Wharf, the bodies of his colleagues scattered all around him, eight centuries vanished in the blink of an eye. Yvonne is missing, and he needs to find Lisa, to save her. They’re trapped between two monstrous forces.

( _“Lisa! Lisa!” he screams, voice cracking and beginning to go hoarse. He’s been screaming for a long time now, ever since he passed Kieran, the other man’s body a mangled mess, several floors above. He’s passed too many friends and colleagues, people who would wave hello to him in the morning or compliment his coffee or sidle over in hopes of gossip about Yvonne. “Lisa!”_

_“_ Delete! Delete! _”_

_The horrible cybernetic cries come from further above, echoing loudly through the stairwells and the empty elevator shafts. The Cybermen are likely making their way downwards, searching for survivors._

_He doesn’t remember where Lisa was supposed to be. He saw her during lunch where their friends had speculated about the Doctor, grilling Ianto for details, and Ianto had only smirked wryly, winking at his girlfriend._

_This morning, they’d laughed about their schedules over coffee and breakfast. Where had Lisa said she was going to be?_

_Ianto’s ever-so-reliable memory is failing him in the face of the brutal distress and dread he feels, so thick in his throat that he’s choking._

_“_ Delete! Delete _”)_

Another blink of an eye, and he’s back on this abandoned spaceship drifting through the darkness of deep space, a Cyberman looming in the utility closet before him.

He reacts in an instant, sonic screwdriver whipped up like a magic wand, the door of the closet slamming shut with a loud _thud_ that echoes through the silent hallway. 

Ianto scrambles backwards, placing necessary distance between him and the closet, willing his stiff legs to _move!_

When he’s halfway down the hallway, he brings his wrist up again to run a scan with his vortex manipulator. Once again, there are no signs of life onboard. 

He double-checks the settings, but no red life sign blinks to attention. The Cyberman is a husk, dead, rusted away by the brief look he got. It’s been here a while, probably as long as the passengers of this ship have been gone, have been missing.

“What the utter hell is going on?” he says, his voice echoing unnaturally around him. He winces at the echo, his heart pounding a rapid rhythm in his chest. He doesn’t like this; he doesn’t like this at all.

Yet he has no choice. He’s still Torchwood. If there is no one left living on this ship, he needs to find out what happened to them and whether the Cybermen were involved. He needs to make sure whatever threat is onboard this ship never makes it off.

He needs to find navigation and get a peek into the ship’s systems. Unfortunately, he can’t hack into it remotely.

Shoving himself off the wall he’s been slumped against, Ianto continues down the hallway, his tread as whisper-soft as it can possibly be. Jack used to always tease him about his ability to sneak up on anyone. Ianto now wishes that it was true.

As he proceeds further through the ship, following the ship’s internal signal, he encounters several new cabins.

One is a large space towards the center of the ship, almost at its heart, with bright artificial solar lights and rows and rows of deep indents that Ianto presumes would have been planters had the soil - and seeds - not disappeared. Thin flat pipes line the ceiling. 

This must have been where the passengers grew their food.

The next room is almost as large as the cafeteria, with a maze of tall shelving units that hold sealed boxes. Ianto cracks one open to find numerous white packets of whatever passes for freeze-dried food in this century. Other containers hold clothing and tools.

If the last room was the solar farm and this is storage, then Ianto must be getting closer towards the front of the ship, hopefully towards navigation.

He passes by another room right after storage, all narrow, crowded with shadows, and crammed with tangles of wires, which must be electrical or this century’s equivalent.

_Nope,_ he decides. _I’m not going in there. Looks like a deathtrap._

A quick scan with his vortex manipulator - and an extra scan with the sonic screwdriver - confirms that there’s nothing of import in there for Ianto, and so he continues on his way.

Eventually, he emerges on the other side of the ship, against a wide stretch of windows that overlook the dark void of space. He takes a moment to peer through, overwhelmed by the emptiness. That awestruck, fearful feeling that’s been haunting him since he stepped onboard doesn’t leave him, and briefly, he longs for the close but cozy confines of _The Myfanwy._

“You’ve got this, Jones,” he says. “Almost there.” His fingers twitch for his sonic blaster, but it cannot help him now. The enemy here is psychological, not physical. There’s nothing to fire at here, although he amuses himself momentarily by recalling one of Jack’s boisterous exploits that he once told during lunch in the Hub.

When the year was still 2009 and the Hub still existed and Ianto spent every night in bed in his flat with his lover, both men steadfastly refusing to acknowledge that Jack had practically moved in.

Ianto rounds the next corner and immediately shivers, yet he continues to inch forward. He takes another step and-

  * _he’s kneeling on the cold, blood-soaked floor of the Hub, cradling the cybernetic body of the thing that used to be Lisa. There’s a young blond woman with a jagged scar running across her forehead whispering lies, and he’s openly weeping. All was for naught; Lisa is gone now. She was always gone, he realizes that now, but he had to try. Moments of meaningless conversation later, he inhales sharply in fear as bullets tear through the Lisa-monster._



  * _there’s cold steel at his throat. There are monsters in the world, and a woman old enough to be his mother stroking his cheek. She wants to slice into him, serve him up as one would a Sunday roast, and he’s paralyzed with fear._



  * _Jack is chasing him through the hallways of the Hub, growling about how he loves Ianto so much that he wants to kill him. A mid-century gay ghost is calling colorful commentary as Ianto runs, and he’s never wanted to kill someone more. Norton Folgate, he means, not Jack. He would never want to kill Jack; he loves him too much. So much in fact that...he wants to kill him._



  * _his lungs rattle as he takes in another breath. Jack is staring down at him, his tears dripping onto Ianto’s face. Ianto wants to tell him not to cry, but he can barely spare the breath. His body is becoming so weak. “I love you,” he says, and Jack’s expression contorts painfully, and the sharp stab he feels in his chest is not from the poison corrupting his lungs and body._



And there’s so much more. Death after death, demon after demon. They all come, unrelenting and merciless, a vengeful onslaught of images and sensation, emotions he had thought long blunted by the sands of time.

Ianto can feel his throat closing in, clogging with fear. There is a heavy weight on his chest, crushing his ribs in, somehow permeating through the layers of skin to wrap around his heart and _twist._

He inhales one last staggering breath, and then Ianto Jones dies from literal fright, body collapsing to the grey tiles of the spaceship like a marionette slumping from cut strings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right, sorry about that! Poor Ianto!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi! Here's Chap 3!

**3987**

**Deep space**

**Ianto**

Ianto gasps back to life, scrabbling against the cold grey tile as his hands rise to clutch at his neck.

He finds he can suddenly breathe again, so he drops his hands down to prop himself up, gaze darting hyperaware up and down the hallway.

Last he remembered, he had just rounded the corner, and then… 

The ocean of memories flashes before his eyes again, and he shudders, drawing his knees up to his chest as he shoves every single memory back into the locked chest in his mind palace where they have been hidden since he was a kid. He takes a moment to count his breaths and bring his bewildered pants under control.

The heavy presence that had descended upon him as soon as he entered the hallway is gone, only the eerie silence of the entire ship remaining. Ianto’s decided that he hates this ship, can’t wait to board  _ The Myfanwy  _ and fly off, but first he needs to find navigation. 

Slowly, he stretches to his feet, trying hard to not recall what it had been like the first time he’d done this, waking up in the cold medical facility in Brileia he’d been forced to flee, Jack so close to his reach but always slipping from his grasp.

“Come on,” he says as he stumbles, body stiff and clumsy as a newborn lamb. “Let’s get moving, Ianto. There’s only dead men on this ship tonight.”

Faintly, he thinks Owen would be amused by his humor. Gwen - and maybe even Tosh - would be horrified, but Jack? Jack would understand. Jack will understand. Ianto just needs to find him.

Luckily, navigation is easier to find than Jack; Ianto only has to limp down another short hallway and carefully - scanning first with his vortex manipulator and sonic screwdriver - round a corner, and then there before him lies the front cabin of the spaceship.

It’s a fairly large cabin, albeit smaller than half the spaces he’s seen on the ship so far, and shaped angularly with large windows spanning most of the front, slim consoles beneath. The consoles, like everything else aboard the ship, are feathered with a thick layer of dust, soft as snow in the eerie white light from overhead. The sleek leather pilot’s chairs cast crisp reflections against the black of space.

Ianto slips into one of the chairs, ghosting his hands over the centered console. The system appears to be much older compared to  _ The Myfanwy _ , but it isn’t too hard to master, at least with a vortex manipulator. He patches into the internal logistics and pulls up details - flight plans, ship history, maintenance records, the captain’s logs.

The flight plans have been mysteriously wiped clean, and the ship history and maintenance records don’t hold much besides vague mechanical details from a very judicious maintenance crew. It doesn’t help Ianto much, however, though he thinks Tosh might have been able to have made something of it. 

When Ianto checks the captain’s logs, he begins to piece together a bit of the story behind the ship.

This was a human colony ship, departed from one of the larger human colonies and heading across this mysterious galaxy - like Ianto - in search of a new planet to call home. There were hundreds of people on board, at the very least. 

But this was over several hundred years ago, Ianto realizes in horror as he checks the date on the last captain’s log. It is quite ordinary, discussing reaching the ship’s destination in a little under a week. There is no reference of violence or anything odd or unusual or unexpected. 

His heart skips a sudden beat, his fingers curled tightly enough around the edge of the console that his knuckles have gone white. His thoughts are all scattered.

This ship has been floating around the galaxy empty for two hundred years. Why hasn’t anyone found it by now? And who sent the distress signal? It can’t have been chiming constantly for the last two centuries, waiting for a distant traveller like Ianto to come upon it.

“This is strange,” murmurs Ianto, “and getting stranger.” The sound of his own voice, husky from disuse, in the stagnant silence is enough to startle him. On  _ The Myfanwy _ , he grew accustomed to long periods of not talking, of hearing no one else, but aboard his own ship, the silence was comforting, familiar like an old friend. Now, it is bone-chilling, danger and death caught in the spaces between sound.

Nothing good could have happened on this ship, but Ianto is the unlucky bastard who has to find out what.

“Fucking Torchwood.” He suddenly recalls another time, centuries ago, that he was stuck in another spaceship alone and longs for a kind, bubbly Turkish telemarketer. “No Zeynep to help you now, Ianto Jones.” He shudders.

Quickly, Ianto accesses the security feed for the ship. He finds regular recordings for every hour, fastforwarding through until the feed abruptly cuts out in a burst of static and just stops. The timestamp on the last recording belongs to the same day as the last captain’s log.

Swallowing down the rough lump in his throat, Ianto pulls up the last recording.

_ There are several hundred humans seated around the round blue tables in the cafeteria, chatting, joking, digging into their various meals.  _

_ The view switches to children playing tag up and down the long hallways; the feed is silent, but Ianto, having been a father, can imagine their loud squeals of joy and excitement. One child accidentally stumbles and breaks off into a long wail, and their friends quickly come to comfort them. It turns out to have been a ploy, however, and the child snickers deviously as they tag their friends in rapid succession, winning the game. _

_ The view switches again, and there are humans milling all about the ship, entering in and out of various rooms or resting in the barracks or gathering in communal areas to play holographic chess and other games. Ianto amusedly catches far too many couples necking in abandoned corners or engaged in more extreme activities. _

_ This could be nothing other than an ordinary day aboard this human colony ship as they wait out their journey to their new home. The captain and his stewards in navigation are leaning against their seats, lazily watching the darkness of space drift by. They are perfectly on course. _

_ They come out of nowhere, materializing in tight formation in the middle of the cafeteria. People scream. It may have been several centuries since they were last seen among humanity, but the stories have been passed down through generations.  _

_ No one remembers or speaks of Canary Wharf; only Ianto knows of the damage it did, the trauma of a knife wound in the early twenty-first century.  _

_ The view switches to the hallway. The children have stilled, are inching backwards down the halfway as one advances forward. _

_ The view switches again. It’s navigation. The captain lays butchered in his seat, his stewards slaughtered several meters away. A monstrous entity stands in the center of the cabin, silver metallic head turning in a slow circle, dead eyes set on the vastness of space outside. _

_ Soon, they will set up their centers on the colony ship and begin their processing. Soon, bodies will lie bleeding like the captain and his stewards except all across the cafeteria, found unsuitable to be upgraded. Soon, an army in silver cybernetics will march away. _

_ But not yet. Not now. _

_ Because the Cybermen have only just arrived. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Any theories about what's going on? Lemme, I love to see whatcha guys think!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are starting to ramp up for poor Ianto! I hope you're enjoying the fic so far!

**3987**

**Deep space**

**Ianto**

The security feed cuts out in a startling burst of static. Ianto flinches backwards, heart pounding in his chest. His mouth has gone dry.

None of this makes sense. With all the questions Ianto’s just had answered, new ones have risen to take their place in his mind.

It is exactly like he thought. Over two hundred years ago, Cybermen boarded this human colony ship and converted or slaughtered every single human onboard. 

But where have all the Cybermen gone? Only a lone Cyberman remains, a dead husk trapped in a utility closet across the ship. 

Even if the Cybermen teleported away, there would be signs of their damage, of their processing centers, of the bloodshed. There are no bodies. Where have all the bodies gone? 

Ianto has walked nearly the entire length of the ship, he presumes, and has found no evidence of a Cybermen invasion except for the one left behind. He doesn’t know how to account for the fact that they are all gone. 

Not for the first time, he murmurs, “What the fuck happened here? What the fuck is going on?” He leans back against the back of his chair, narrowly aware of the sudden sweat of fear dampening his skin. 

What would Jack do in a situation like this, he wonders? What would Gwen? Or Tosh? Or Owen? 

Jack might try to play the big damn hero, but with Cybermen, he turns deadly serious. Ianto shivers, reigning in his grip on memories of Lisa, of  _ that night.  _ He would likely blast a hole through the remaining Cyberman, and Gwen too would follow his lead, as would Owen. Tosh might opt for something cleverer such as an attempt to hack into its cybernetics or further into the ship’s systems, but she too would end up resorting to deadlier tactics. 

Ianto is none of them, but he knows what he has to do, that he has to destroy the Cyberman. If there’s any life left to it, then all of humanity is in grave danger. There could be some kind of cybermind still remaining aboard the ship, could have been manipulating Ianto the entire time without his knowledge or awareness.

_ Because this is where these things start,  _ Jack hisses in Ianto’s ear, frustrated and scared. _ Small decisions that become mass slaughter. These creatures regain a foothold by exploiting human weakness. Then they take a base, rebuild their forces, and before you know it, the Cyber race is spreading out across the universe, erasing worlds, assimilating populations, all because of the tiny beginnings here.  _

Ianto knows what he has to do. His fingers slip to the sonic blaster at his hip, stroking the sleek curve of the barrel. He rises to his feet with trembling legs, swallowing the lump in his throat, summoning his courage.

He’s Torchwood,  _ damnit _ , and he does what needs to be done. 

Determinedly, he marches down the hallway, vortex manipulator tuned for any unexpected presences. He rounds the first corner, then very cautiously rounds the second, shoulders slumping when he realizes there is nothing there but the same eerie silence that permeates the rest of the ship.

He forges on, past the large recreational space, takes several long strides past electrical. Catching a glimpse of the dark shadows cobwebbing the interior, he shudders, well-aware of how his sonic blaster presses into his skin even through the thick synthetic wool of his trousers. 

_ You are far too old to be scared of the dark, Jones, _ he thinks wyrly, imagining how Owen would tease him if he saw him hesitating. Still, he moves past.

Storage and the solar farm pass by as well, and then after a long, tangled maze of hallways, he begins to near his destination, his brisk tread unintentionally slowing.

Ianto’s hesitating again. He knows that he has to approach the Cyberman husk, but he doesn’t want to. Every instinct in his body screams no, his fists slippery with perspiration. The snug jacket he’s wearing is suddenly too tight and restrictive, and he tugs his collar loose before he reaches to fish out the sonic screwdriver. 

Slowly, he slips his sonic blaster from the holster, gripping it tightly and aiming it at the locked door.

_ Let me talk to her. I can still save her, save all of us. She's not a monster. _

_ The army will be rebuilt from here. This building is suitable. _

_ You could have saved her. You're worse than anything locked up down there. One day, I'll have the chance to save you, and I'll watch you suffer and die. _

_ You always said you didn't love me for what I looked like. Last time you said that, it was a Saturday. We were hungover. You made cheese toasties, and moaned I hadn't descaled my kettle. That night, we camped on a beach in Brittany. It got so freezing we wore our coats and shared one sleeping bag. When we woke up the next morning, a dog was pissing on our tent. Hold me, Ianto. I need you to hold me. I need you to tell me it's all right. _

The world around him is blurring as he wavers on his feet.

No, that’s not right.

Ianto reaches a cold hand to his face, and it comes away wet. He’s crying. He doesn’t even remember when he started tearing up. His knees feel wobbly, his chest suddenly tight, but this isn’t terror or fear, albeit he still feels it faintly. This is grief.

Ianto Jones is scared, terrified even, but all he can think of is Lisa. That’s all he ever thinks he’ll associate with Cybermen, intense fear,  _ that night _ , and Lisa Hallett. 

“There’s no time to waste,” he says, voice echoing in the silence. He grits his teeth and shoves everything away, pulls every last inch of his facade back into place. He reaches up with his free hand and scrubs his cheeks until they’re raw.

He’s Ianto Jones, he’s Torchwood, and there’s a Cyberman he needs to destroy.

The sonic screwdriver hums, aimed at the touch panel, the lock on the utility door disengaging with a reluctant click. The door swings open slowly, far too slowly, to reveal the Cyberman, standing stiff and dead in the doorframe.

He lifts the sonic blaster, finger ready on the trigger. One shot won’t do it. It’ll take several, but he’s prepared.

His finger squeezes down as he counts down backwards under his breath.

“ _ Wait! _ ”

Under the shimmer of bright white light, the opaque figure of a girl, dressed in the loose, nondescript clothing the human colonists wore on the security feed, materializes several feet away from Ianto, delicate features contorted into a fierce scream. Ianto startles backwards, his grip slipping on the blaster.

“ _ Wait! _ ” she screams, her color rapidly filling in, her eyes grey and panicked, hair a ferocious mess of dark curls, skin pale, clothing brown and plain. “ _ Don’t fire! _ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See you tomorrow for one last chapter!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter! I hope that you gets the answers you guys wanted and that everything makes sense and is spooooooooky!

**3987**

**Deep space**

**Ianto**

“ _ Wait! _ ” the girl repeats urgently as Ianto pivots to level his sonic screwdriver at her, keeping the blaster aimed at the Cyberman. He doesn’t know what good the screwdriver could do against her, considering that she appears to be translucent, but he needs the blaster, his actual weapon, on the Cyberman for the sake of his own sanity. “ _ Don’t fire on the Cyberman! _ ”

She’s fully vivid now, only the slight wispiness around her image to hint that she just appeared out of thin air before Ianto, and he blinks at her.

“ _ What the literal fuck! _ ” He’s been saying it all night, but he thinks he means it the most now. “Who the fuck are you?” All his usual composure has flown out the window.

“I’m the one you’ve been feeling around the ship all night,” she says, voice innocently sweet, with just a hint of apology to her words. “I’m very sorry; I didn’t mean to hurt you earlier _. _ ”

“Hurt me?” Ianto echoes in disbelief, brow raised. His arms don’t twitch from where they are raised. “You killed me!”

“And you got back up!” the girl offers sheepishly, slumping her shoulders. “Most dead people don’t. Nice party trick!” Her cheerfulness fades in the wake of Ianto’s glower. “Right, sorry. It’s been a while since I’ve been around an actual person. It’s usually just me and the ship, though I’m not always awake.”

“Who are you?” repeats Ianto, words edged with steel. “Why are you the only...thing, person, whatever you are, left on this ship after two hundred years besides that Cyberman?” A beat. “And why can’t I destroy it? You were a colonist presumably. You know what they are capable of.”

The girl tosses her hair over her shoulder, blinking widely at Ianto. She isn’t exactly reacting with the horror that Ianto would have expected from a victim of a Cyberman invasion. “Has it really been two hundred years?”

“Yes!” he growls. “It’s 3987!” At the venom in his tone, she finally pales, the seams in the wall behind her threading through her frame, lips parting wordlessly as she silently mouths the year.

“ _ I didn’t realize it’d been so long, _ ” she says quietly, sounding small, and abruptly, Ianto realizes that she’s a teenager. She can’t be any older than seventeen. 

“Who are you?” he repeats a little more kindly. “What happened here?”

She swallows roughly, features contorting with grief. “I can’t tell you exactly, but I can show you.” And before Ianto can voice his protest, she drifts forward, cutting straight across the sonic screwdriver and blaster.

Suddenly, there is agonizing cold at his temples as the girl places her hands there. A shudder grinds through Ianto, and then he sees  _ everything. _

Her name is Kes, and she’s been travelling on this ship with her mothers and brother for months. They are excited to reach their new home, although the long journey is beginning to wear away at their patience.

The day the Cybermen arrive, Kes is in the cafeteria, bickering with her brother over a portion of pureed vegetable substitute. When they materialize in the space, people scream. Her mothers clutch her younger brother close to them, but Kes sits frozen with fear.

The Cybermen sort through them, deleting the elders. Her mothers are shuffled off into a different direction, but Kes pulls her younger brother to his legs, keeps him behind her, his head buried in her stomach. He doesn’t need to see these horrors, the bloodshed, the brutality, the absolute monstrosities their friends are becoming as they are converted, one by one.

When it comes time for her, she’s ripped away from her brother by these cold, cruel creatures. He screams his throat hoarse, but she watches, numb. They are among the last to be converted, and she is resigned, hopeless.

The restraints from the conversion unit come down, but she doesn’t struggle. Only when the first blade cuts into her skin, she screams. And she  _ screams.  _ Every single nerve ending in her body is on fire, but her mind is elsewhere.

Her mind is  _ everywhere.  _ A tangled web of fearpainagonydesperationfutilehope _ ohgodwhyisthishappeningsomeonehelp _ and nothing but a cold, blank void from the Cybermen. 

This infuriates her. The blades continue to massacre her body, but she feels none of it. She needs the Cybermen to  _ feel _ , to  _ understand _ the pain they’re causing, to  _ understand _ their inhumanity.

Kes  _ burns _ humanity back into the Cybermen, and now, they  _ scream  _ as she does. When her screams are over, never to be heard again, her body slumps against the conversion unit, lifeless, but her mind still exists outside, still watches.

She watches the Cybermen realize in horror what they’ve become, what they’ve done, and turn their backs on the bloody bodies to put those who remain waiting in line out of their misery. When nothing remains but the Cybermen, they dismantle everything and eject it, as well as themselves, into the cold mercy of space out of despair.

But Kes remains, stuck on this ship, not herself but not a ghost either, only a telepathic impression of who she used to be.

And Ianto falls out, panting. “Fuck,” he says throatily. “ _ Fuck. _ ”

Kes nods. “Now, you understand.” She smiles sadly. “And now you know what I’m going to ask of you.” Her eyes are soft and wide and pleading. “Set the ship to self-destruct. Destroy this ship. Kill me a final time.  _ Please. _ ”

Numbly, he nods before making his way back to navigation, thoughts a grey blur. His skin prickles, now exposed to Kes’s energy, the same way it used to around the Rift. The planet she was born on could have been settled on another rift in time and space; he’ll have no way of knowing.

Engaging the self-destruct sequence is far too easy. There is a switch to flick and the captain’s passcode and the stewards’ passcodes as well, but Ianto bypasses those with the vortex manipulator. He rigs the sequence to a timer, long enough that he knows he’ll be able to make his way across the ship to where  _ The Myfanwy  _ is docked and navigate away safely.

When he passes through the corridor where Kes had killed him, he feels his skin prickle and hears a whispered  _ Thank you. _ He nods without looking back, continues onwards until he reaches the docking bay.

Ianto boards  _ The Myfanwy  _ and disengages autopilot, throwing the thrusters to full-speed before steering away from the colony ship. Briefly, he realizes he never actually caught the other ship’s name.

He’s far enough away when he pauses briefly to hover and watch the explosion. Thehe first mushroom cloud of flame bubbles outwards, debris arcing through the empty black, and he nods and resumes hurtling  _ The Myfanwy  _ forward, heading towards the other edge of the galaxy.

Ianto doesn’t turn back again, and that is his mistake.

Behind him, from the waning explosion, emerges an escape pod, barely capable of holding the lone Cyberman, those formerly dead eyes now alight and glowing as the pod speeds towards the rest of the universe. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I really hope you enjoyed that! Lemme know if there's anything else you might wanna see in the fool me once verse! I'm excited for the rest of this verse; I fricking love it!

**Author's Note:**

> dun dun DUN!!!!!!!!!!
> 
> Find me on tumblr [here](http://princess-of-the-worlds.tumblr.com/) or on Twitter [here](https://twitter.com/rajkumarinik). I tweet and reblog mostly Torchwood with occasionally amusing commentary on nonsense. Please come talk to me and tell me if/how much you like my fic or like ask me about it on tumblr; all my schoolwork has become remote now, and I have limited social interaction. And if there's any other fool me once spinoffs you wanna see, feel free to ask in the comments!
> 
> Reblog the Tumblr post [here](https://princess-of-the-worlds.tumblr.com/post/633073984035078144/title-alone-in-my-mind-link-here-ship-none)


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